We are looking for an exceptional candidate to help us accelerate our improvement journey at Manchester City Council Children’s Services. We’re improving all the time and at pace - and we want candidates with a strong record of leadership and a keen eye for detail to help us get their faster.

We have recently been recognised by Ofsted as successfully creating an environment conducive to continued improvement. Our dedicated and passionate staff report feeling listened to and supported and are always demonstrating a commitment to improving the lives of vulnerable children. It should therefore be no surprise that our vision is for our children and young people to be safe, happy, healthy and successful.

The task we’ve set ourselves - to deliver excellent services to our children and their families - is challenging and will take hard work, collaboration and innovation to achieve our ambitions.

Here are the principles we’re going to follow to get there:

Be child centred in our practice and planning

Listen to and respond to children and young people

Focus on strengths; building resilience

Early action, innovative and integrated services

The Candidates

The successful candidate will be a key member of our management teams who are proud and passionate about Manchester; supporting the delivery of consistently high standards of practice and be able to demonstrate our behaviours.

We are looking for someone who understands ‘good’ practice and can effectively work with others and in a culture of high support and challenge; experienced in delivering sustained improvements and leading a complex Locality.

The Role

The Service Lead will utilise their social work management experience to oversee a number of front line children's social work teams across our duty and assessment function or our Child in Need and Court teams. The primary purpose of this role is ensure good standards of practice are met and that team performance is excellent. The role holder will be a key decision maker in a locality area for children known to social work services.

The roles which provide an operational and strategic function within the service and will specifically:

Manage risks to children and maximise children’s life chances ensuring great outcomes are achieved.

Maintain effective systems for monitoring, reviewing, auditing and evaluating staff against service objectives through regular performance activities for example high quality supervision, and by taking appropriate corrective action as necessary.

Support workforce planning through recruitment and selection, retention, targeted support for newly qualified Social Workers, talent management and succession planning.

Contribute to the development of the strategies, policies, procedures and processes relating to one’s own profession area and accountability, taking into account the views of all stakeholders.

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